America Online has announced that it will “soon” present a proposal for interoperating with its instant messaging services, including both ICQ and AOL Instant Messenger. According to AOL, allowing instant messaging services to interoperate is a difficult thing to do from a technical standpoint and one has to be concerned with how to control spam and other issues. Barry Schuler, president of America Online Interactive Services, compared making Instant Messaging programs work together to making different mail systems work together, which he thinks was a mistake in retrospect since no one thought about how to standardize against spam.

JOEL'S OPINION
What a load of junk this interview is. First of all, if it's technically difficult, how come Microsoft, Yahoo, and now Odigo have succeeded in designing their programs not once but many times to work with AOL's Instant Messenger? Second, if you actually believe what Barry said about blocking spam, I get spammed all of the time when I'm on ICQ and AOL's Instant Messenger, so it's not like AOL is in any position to propose standards. Third, he didn't really answer the question of why AOL's Instant Messenger and AOL's ICQ don't play together yet. It's obvious that AOL is trying to keep Instant Messaging all to itself in hopes of forcing others to “license” its technology so that it can make money from something that everyone wants to use freely.

I can remember a long time ago when ICQ was first out, a message circulated saying that Mirabilis (the company that created ICQ) was considering charging a small fee for every certain number of instant messages that were sent. As a result, the creators received a bazillion messages from the user base talking about why that's such a terrible idea.

What I find most interesting is the timing of this statement. Of course, AOL is being looked at by the FTC and may have to give up some pieces of its company to satisfy regulators in order to have its buyout of Time Warner approved. Perhaps AOL will be willing to open its IM programs in exchange for not having to give away some of its Instant Messaging business?

One more thing: if you're interested in hearing how Sam feels about what AOL's been up to with its Instant Messaging blocking, read our earlier news item.